A Visual Guide to DNA Sequencing

A critique of a snippet from Dario Amodei and Dwarkesh Patel’s recent interview.

How to “read” nucleic acids, from Sanger to nanopores.

First introduced into laboratories in 1881, agar remains indispensable as a culture medium.

A eulogy to the reference human.

The forgotten story of an invention found in every biology lab.

From early experiments on fertility and embryonic development to becoming the first cloned eukaryote from an adult cell, Xenopus frogs have had an outsized influence on the life sciences.